“War on Police” Hearing Devolves into War on Reality

by Chip Gibbons
BoR DC
Nov. 23, 2015

When it came time for him to ask a question, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) remarked “I know there was an effort to make this a neutral title for this hearing, but I think it leans a little bit in a provocative way.”

To say that titling a hearing on the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s oversight of law enforcement “War on Police: How the Federal Government Undermines State and Local Law Enforcement” “leans a little bit in a provocative way” is of course a dramatic understatement. However, that comment more so than any other sums up the tone of the hearing—mild-mannered statements, rooted in facts, verging almost on being reasonable juxtaposed with longwinded, fact-free monologues drenched in hyperbole and mentioning everything from the color that Levite priests wore in the Old Testament (blue!) to US-Cuban relations and transgender rights. If this sounds hopelessly disjointed and potentially divorced from reality, that’s because it is.

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